The message has since been erased from the chalkboard sign, a spokeswoman for the bar confirmed. “We all agree that [the sign] was inappropriate,” says Sara Polito. “This is something we are not taking lightly.”

Scruffy Duffies was closed Monday for the Memorial Day holiday, which is why managers did not respond to initial requests for comment.

Williams’ story has already been shared hundreds of times on Facebook.

She says the bar managers and a server ignored her requests Saturday night to erase the message. “They happened to do this to the wrong girl who had the exact right network,” Williams says. She left the bar in protest.

The apparent joke has set off a firestorm of comments via social media. The uproar is similar to an incident a week ago where a man took to Facebook because he believed a bouncer at an Uptown bar turned him away for racist reasons.

Williams called the event “shocking” but admits she did get heated after her requests were ignored. “I’m not going to be in a bar like this that’s willing to make these kinds of jokes,” she says. “I have friends that [are victims of domestic violence]. I myself have been in an emotionally abusive relationship. It’s just not OK.”

Polito says the owners of the bar have also been “directly affected by domestic violence themselves” and it’s “not something they promote or wanted to be taken in a joking manner.”

Management will discuss the incident on Tuesday.

[UPDATE: Brian Harder, president of Harder Concepts, which owns Scruffy Duffies, sent this statement after a management meeting on Tuesday:

This was an isolated event executed by an employee that made a bad decision followed by a manager that did not recognize and fix the problem. Obviously not everybody’s sense of humor is the same. My brother and I are the owners at Scruffy Duffie’s and we agree that it was very distasteful and offensive. Had we been aware or seen this post we would’ve immediately taken it down. We apologize to anybody who was offended. We did investigate this issue further and our general manager has since been fired. In our eyes it was his responsibility to recognize and not allow something of this matter to take place in our stores. We will ensure that something like this will never happen again.]

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